Monday, November 12, 2007

Love the blog! Keep up the great work. Was just wondering though...I noticed you have Imp Right Fury. Does this only apply to offensive holy spells for the increased threat or to healing spells as well? Did you just grab that for soloing? Im guessing you don't have this up while healing correct?

Righteous Fury does apply to healing spells. However, paladin heals are innately lower threat (50%) compared to priest, druids, or shaman heals. And because we run with at least three paladins, I always have Salvation on.

A paladin will have 0.5*0.7*1.9 = 67% threat. A priest with Silent Resolve would have 0.8*0.7 = 56% threat. So you have a bit more threat, but not that much more. Plus, I find it's better to be higher than the other healers on the threat meters. That way, if an add does get loose, it comes to you rather than the priest. With plate and Imp RF, you can take a couple of hits.

Keeping Imp RF on gives you 6% damage reduction all the time, which helps with splash damage. Salvation will "muffle" the effects of Imp RF. So you can keep RF up pretty much all the time in raids if you have Salvation. If you don't have Salvation, you should probably turn RF off.

If you need to watch threat, or if you don't take any splash damage, you can always turn RF off. For example, Nightbane is a fight I wouldn't run with RF, because when Nightbane lands, threat can get tricky, and I don't want to pull aggro and wipe the raid.

As well, it's useful when soloing or doing PvP, and it helps me to tank 5-mans without needing to respec. In the end, there's not a lot of better choices for those 3 talent points. I could drop Imp RF and Blessed Life and pick up Imp Might, but other than that, I don't think there's any other talents that would be more useful.

One last caveat, if you melee to keep Judgements up and you use RF, use Seal of the Crusader rather than Seal of Righteousness. You don't want extra threat from the Holy damage of Righteousness. You probably won't pull aggro, but better safe than sorry. For example, I keep Judgement of Light up on Void Reaver, so I put up Righteous Fury to help mitigate the pounding and run SotC. SotC also has the advantage of speeding up your swings, so you can spend more time healing.

I think one thing people forget is that paladins(most of them) wear plate. We can take a beating from most things and not die.

The idea of a paladin is to be in the think of things supporting the dps/tank with heals, and judging on targets.

If we were meant to just stand at the back we'd be limited to cloth/leather.

Admitadly there are still some Pallies that use cloth/leather for healing, but thats mainly because the cloth/leather healing items before you start raiding that you see are better than some of the healing plate items.

I like your idea Rohan, i've never seen a paladin running with imp. RF before.

gt, it depends on the fight. Unfortunately we don't have very many priests or shamans, so our ability to deal with splash damage is lower than most other raids.

So it's more important for us to try and keep Judgement of Light up than it would be normally.

It really depends on the fight. When possible, I try to keep JoL/W up while healing. However, on a lot of fights that's just not possible.

Also, I can do this because the other paladins are covering the tanks directly. If you only had 2 paladin healers, with shaman and priests raid-healing, it becomes more important to stand back and spam heals on your tank.

In all honesty there isn't much reason not to take Imp. RF if you are going down prot for Kings (which pretty much every Holy pally will do). It not only allows you to tank regular instances (and maybe a heroic or trash in kara), but the 6% damage reduction is incredibly useful. On fights like Naj'entus or Void Reaver where you know there is going to be a lot of raid damage going out that 6% is going to make a huge difference. Its also great for non-raiding situations like PvP or soloing. The extra threat is easily compensated for by our innate reduction for heals and if its a really aggro sensitive fight Salv can make up most of the difference.

I'm also a fan of Improved Righteous Fury. My Paladin is built around arena healing, so that little extra damage reduction can help. You'd be amazed at how much damage people can throw at you! And it is definitely helpful for dungeons... It's like the guy above me said, we are meant to be up in the thick of things!

gt its safer for the melee if Paladins just stay in on void reaver. A typical vr kill I was around 60% of the highest aggro from imp right fury, healing and sor hits. Hmm with the new 30% +damage that could actually be a problem.

But sure if their is no damage from aoe or positioning why not stand up with melee.